Back to 1986: The Golden Age

In 1986, vocational student Shen Nian was framed and sent to prison for eight years. His younger brother took out loan-shark debt to clear his name, then went astray. His mother cried herself blind, and his father died of grief.

When he opened his eyes, he was eighteen again.

This time, he would never be anyone’s pawn.

Starting with a three-wheeled cart and a tin shack, he would carve out a path to success in the building-materials trade, an industry no one thought much of.

Cement, mortar, precast slabs: what others saw as worthless stuff would become the leverage he used to move the times.

People laughed at him: “What can a cement seller possibly accomplish?”

Shen Nian said nothing.

Twenty years later, the people who had mocked him were still running market stalls in the county town.

His name, meanwhile, was engraved on a monument to China’s building-materials industry.

This is the story of an ordinary man who rode the tide of the times, rising from bricklayer to builder of a trillion-yuan empire.

It is also the story of a group of ordinary people crushed by life, who supported one another and learned how to live with dignity.

“This time, nobody’s going to take advantage of me again.”